Comment by TowerTall

Comment by TowerTall 11 hours ago

We had a Lada 1200 when I was a kid. Mid/late 1970s. The car was a 1:1 copy of the Fiat 127 if I remember correctly.

It served my family well for many years, and for us, it was "sort of" rock solid. That a Lada was "rock solid" was in no way the norm. People were saying that we had a Wednesday model, meaning it was assembled on a Wednesday.

The saying goes that the quality of cars built on Monday/Tuesday was impacted by the hangovers the workers had from all the vodka drinking during the weekend. For Thursday/Friday cars, the workers were already mentally gone on the weekend but on wednesdays the workers were fresh and motivated, and did their job proper.

We were lucky and that car took us kids on many road trips all across Europe. I remember that the car seat was covered in plastic, and on our first trip from cold Denmark to sunny Italy, we all got burn marks from the seats and had to stop buying some covers.

jabl 9 hours ago

> We had a Lada 1200 when I was a kid. Mid/late 1970s. The car was a 1:1 copy of the Fiat 127 if I remember correctly.

Ladas were common over here until the late 80'ies. They all but disappeared during the 1990'ies. They weren't exactly known for quality compared to Western cars, but they were cheap, and easy to fix by yourself if you were so inclined.

And yes, the story behind the Lada was that the Soviets made a deal with Fiat to acquire an obsolete factory. So the entire factory was dismantled and shipped to the USSR. And then they just kept producing the same model, with extremely minor changes, for decades.

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usrnm 8 hours ago

> And then they just kept producing the same model, with extremely minor changes, for decades.
That's not true, though. The first models were, practically, Fiats, but then they diverged and the second generation (produced in the 80s) had significant changes. Niva had nothing to do with Fiat from day 1, it was developed internally

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- prmoustache 8 hours ago
  
  The Niva was actually a very modern car when it was released. I think it was one of the first unibodied AWD.
  
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  darkwater 7 hours ago
  
  I'm not sure when the Niva was initially made but I have memories of rusted Nivas from the late 80s to early '90s already.
  
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  prmoustache 5 hours ago
  
  It was released in 1977 and afaik is still sold under the "niva legend" name in several countries while the "niva" name is also used for the rebranding of some GM based models.
  It is not the car you'd want to commute on, or drive in highways but it is a super decent offroader. I'd probably choose the Suzuki Jimny over a brand new Niva Legend though.
  
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eptcyka 4 hours ago

It would’ve been great if it was a 1:1 copy, but the soviets made the design cheaper to produce and less reliable.

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jojobas 10 hours ago

Export cars were made with some special care, for years buying a car destined for export was preferable to a brand new one built for domestic market, even if "scratch and dent".

My father always carried a bunch of membranes for the fuel pump, a spare accessories belt, distributor, fuses and possibly something else. Every item in the list was a result of limping somewhere with a vague hope of finding the part in stock - crap quality compounded with deficit made pretty much every trip a bit of a gamble. Driving schools also taught maintenance and troubleshooting, having a private car was perceived somewhat like a mechanic hobby.

I doubt it was the norm with Western/Japanese cars by the 70s.

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lnsru 10 hours ago

Probably it’s worth mentioning that the repair shops as we know them today didn’t exist in the world of Soviet cars. So everybody was responsible for his car and the owners were forced to spent weekends under the car in garage blocks sharing tools, knowledge and beer.

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- somenameforme 7 hours ago
  
  The manuals for the Lada were epic. In a quick search for an original one I came upon this [1] which is an English version one, which is even better than what I was looking for! It describes the entire car's operation and mechanism in extensive detail along with descriptions of how to replace parts, what might go wrong, and more.
  I'm not sure that 'just send it to the repair shop' was an overall improvement in society in so many ways. In modern times those shops are infamous for exploiting people's ignorance and ripping them off to an absurd degree, and it primarily affects the lower socioeconomic groups within society, since the upper groups tend to cycle through relatively newer cars more regularly, in part to avoid having to deal with long term maintenance issues.
  [1] - https://archive.org/details/manualzilla-id-6025672/mode/2up
  
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  phatfish 4 hours ago
  
  My dad would always buy a "Hanyes" manual for our second hand cars in the UK, as inevitably there would be something to fix. These were comprehensive 3rd party manuals.
  I have also gotten them for newer early 2000s cars. Never had to use one for my 06 Vauxhall though. Apart from some standard things that really need a repair shop (replacing the exhaust for example) I've never had an issue or breakdown.
  The cars I see on the side of the motorway are always new, feels like there was a period before electronics really took over that most cars were pretty bulletproof.
  
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  ACCount37 6 hours ago
  
  Repair shops are a necessity.
  Not everyone can learn even the basics of car maintenance. There are a lot of drivers on the roads today who wouldn't be able to do even something as simple as top up the oil or change the tires. And actual repairs, even on older simpler cars, even with an exhaustive technical manual and modern learning aids like video tutorials or AR overlays? Fat fucking chance.
  There are ways around that. You can keep the cars simple to repair and also expensive and unavailable, so that only the people with tech know-how and/or willingness to learn it get them. Make cars as tools for professionals and tech enthusiasts, like PCs were in the 80s or construction equipment is now. Or you can make the cars cheap and disposable enough that if one fails, you can just send it to a scrapyard and get a new one.
  I don't like either of those workarounds, so repair shops are the least bad option.
  
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  xattt 4 hours ago
  
  You’re looking at a repair manual, which would be expected to describe operation and function in detail. These are available for all cars if you know who to ask.
  I recall looking through owner’s manual for a domestic VAZ 2101. It was standard stuff, but certainly didn’t go into detail about knolling your car.
  
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  eloisant 5 hours ago
  
  Why can't we have both?
  Ability to self-service your car but repair shop if you don't have the skills, tools or don't want to do it yourself.
  
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xattt 4 hours ago

The Canadian export versions of the Lada full-size sedans had doors reinforced with beams for increased safety. So structurally, they were indeed built a little better.
There were several other features like western carburetors and emissions controls, but these were likely be a “temporary” improvement for the domestic market as those parts wear out and would likely be replaced with local parts.
The thing about JDMs is they tend to be more desirable than export versions, because of whatever quirkiness that gets left behind at the time of export.

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- jojobas 3 hours ago
  
  There's no such thing as a Lada full-size sedan. The longest one was something like 4.15m long. Contemporary American "mid-size sedans" were over 5 meters long and even "compact sedans" were quite a bit bigger.
  
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janisorlovs 9 hours ago

Anything with “export” variant was considered better (in consumer goods 100%). Even butter

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- Cthulhu_ 5 hours ago
  
  Which has now looped around because you can get cheap 'export' beer in grocery stores here (western Europe) which is pretty much guaranteed to be produced in the same breweries as the premium brands like Heineken. These breweries never stop producing because empty tanks are wasteful.
  
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brnt 7 hours ago

There were Lada dealers up until the nineties here in NL, but few people drove them. I've never heard anyone describe them as reliable though. To the contrary.

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